Article - The Future Of Records & Information Management

by:  Kurt W. Stevenson - Executive Director & COO - Horizon Dynamics, LLC

May 2006

Can the future of records & information management be defined? Is it possible for any of us to say where information technology will be heading in the next 10 years?  The obvious answer is no, however, I believe that we can paint a image of the future that is vastly different from what we presently see.

Each and every day new technology is designed and uncovered, making it virtually impossible for records managers of the past to keep up.  This in turn creates a need for a "New breed of RIM Managers".

With government regulations and mandates now in place, firms and organizations must keep a tight watch on their records and information.

Records managers have traditionally been long tenure employees of firms or organizations.  Some even outsource records to a third party vendor.  Now with the onset of ECM and digital records management, records managers must be educated in the field of Information Technology.  No longer can the records management be a part of facilities management. It must now be a leg of the IT management of each and every firm and organization. 

Records managers must be able to gather information from multiple databases and display them in a unified manner across global networks, and that's the easy part.  Designing rules and retention to the digital files so that specific personnel can see the records and documents is the hard part. This involves a wealth of knowledge in the IT field.   

In the past the majority of the IT needs were handled by the IT departments.  Now many vendors can provide intelligent software applications that are fairly easy to understand if you have basic IT knowledge.  So, records managers of the past must now educate themselves in basic networking environments, security environments, capture, indexing, and several other areas. 

Think of it this way...Paper documents have always come at a records department at a certain rate of speed.  One that can be calculated and controlled.  Traditionally, paper gets sent to filing where it is processed and then shelved.  Electronic documents on the other hand come at 5 times the rate of speed and from multiple input devices.  This creates a very uncontrolled environment if it is not managed with the correct technology and staff.  Now MFP's(Multi function Printers), Email, E-filing, Microsoft Apps, and many other Applications continually feed this giant records monster.  Not to mention the influx of paper has not stopped either. 

So, now the records manager is responsible for managing 5 times the information, plus all the digital input.  It just can't be done by humans alone.  Managers of records and information must rely on technology to help them with the massive load of digital documents and records. 

So what happens to the records managers of the past?  I will have to agree that there is a certain value in having someone on your staff with 50 years of knowledge, but that knowledge must be filtered to help you build technology solutions.  You just can't manage the workload the old way.  It seems our industry Associations like to talk about all this fancy technology but are doing very little to educate our Records Managers on how to leverage or purchase technology.  Just take the CRM exam for an example.  This ridiculous 6 part exam supposedly creates the ultimate Records Manager. Although if you put a CRM up against a RIM Manager with 10,000 documents each, and told them to index, OCR, apply retention and security rules, and post the documents on a secure network via a sharepoint worksite.  I'd bet on the RIM Manager!  New certification techniques must be put in place to brace the new breed of RIM Managers for what is ahead.  A RIM Manager should at a minimum hold these CompTia certifications: CDIA+ / Security + / Network +

These certifications combined would make a more stable records manager.  If you don't understand RM basics (retention, media types, government regs. ect.) You shouldn't be in the field!

Food For Thought...

CRM certificates are nice, but do they really cover what is now needed by the records & information management industry? What kind of information technology background do the certifying authorities have?  Does a CRM know what XML is?  What will the future hold for the CRM?  Has a shift been made towards the RIM Manager?

These are all interesting questions, but the truth is that if you're still pushing paper, you're at risk.  You have no backup!